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waste by an announcement from the rear of the set.
"I have the president on the phone for the minister of tourism."
Excitement seemed to ripple through the crew. "Bye-bye, Hal. Thanks so much."
The woman in the bikini threaded her way through the set, shaking hands and
offering her thanks to every one of the crew, all the way down to the Florida
State University sophomore who was interning with the sound engineer. "How did
I look?" she asked Todd Rohrman.
"You turned me on."
"Come on!"
"Almost. Seriously."
She gave him a doubting look and took the portable phone.
She said, "Minister Summens speaking."
Todd Rohrman strolled away to watch the set teardown.
After all, government leaders needed their privacy when discussing matters of
state.
"MINISTER SUMMENS, what's our communications status?"
"Wide open, Mr. President," replied Dawn Summens, professional bikini model
and Union Island minister of tourism.
"I see," the President said.
The president always had a hard time improvising on an unsecure phone line.
"How are your visits going with the U.S. officials?" she asked leadingly.
"Good. Yes, productive. Constructive. I would like to discuss them when you
have time."
"I'll be available in my office between seven and eight this evening, Mr.
President."
"Fine. Talk to you tonight, Minister Summens."
"Goodbye, Mr. President." Summens killed the connection.
"Moron," she muttered under her breath.
Chapter 6
The white man wore only a T-shirt. If he was cold in this unseasonably chilly
evening, he didn't show it. If he was concerned about being alone in the worst
part of town, he wasn't showing that, either. Maybe, Antoine Jackson thought,
he was a crazy man. He'd heard some white men did some mighty stupid things.
But in sixteen years he'd never seen a white man acting this stupid.
He dragged on the front window of his mother's second-story apartment and
yelled, "Man, what are you doing here?"
The white man looked right at him as if evaluating him for a moment, but he
never slowed his pace. "You ought to stay out of that place! They'll kill you
in there!"
The white man ignored him. "I'm just trying to help you out."
The white man waved and went to the door of the crack house without
hesitation.
Antoine slammed his window. He tried to be a good kid-Lord knew that was tough
enough living in the Nashville slums. He tried to be decent to his fellow
human beings. But sometimes people just didn't want your sincere help. Let the
white man go get himself killed if that's what he wanted. Nothing more Antoine
could do about it.
THE WHITE MAN PUT his hands on the door and waited until he saw the shadow of
the young man disappear from the window. The kid was partly right. Somebody
was going to get killed.
He felt the movements of people inside the condemned building, and his
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nostrils were assaulted by the acrid fumes of burning trash.
The quick slap with the flat of his hand looked feeble, but the blow cracked
the door at the bolt and sent it swinging open.
"Special delivery!" He stepped inside and nudged the door closed. "Candy-gram!
Pizza boy! Anybody home?" The foyer of the condemned apartment building was
empty. At the foot of the stairs anyone else would have heard only silence,
but he detected activity in the ground-floor rooms and movement upstairs.
The ground-floor inhabitants were his first consideration. But those upstairs
might try to make a break while he was otherwise engaged. And he hated to do a
half-assed job. He grabbed at a broken steel folding chair and dismantled it
into components with a few snaps of his fist, then straightened the longest
section of black metal tube and jammed it between the wall and the stair rail
six inches off the ground.
That would slow whoever descended from the upper floors.
He strolled through the door of the first ground-floor apartment. The tiny
living room was bare, but the burning stench was potent.
"Fire inspector! You need a license for a cookout in this city, you know."
The simmering coals of a fire glowed on a makeshift fireplace of scavenged
bricks in what had once been a bedroom. The charred remains of rotted timber,
old wooden signs and melted plastic soda bottles littered the floor.
He heard his assailant coming and waited until the noisy footsteps were close,
then he intercepted the attacker with movement that looked like quick-seeping
mercury.
The attacker was street scum, a crack dealer who used a little too much of his
own product. His clothing and hair were filthy; his face had dirt crusted in
the creases.
His dirty creases grew when his mouth gaped open. His mouth gaped open because
he suddenly found his handgun flying out of his grasp as if it had sprouted
wings. The man he thought he was sneaking up on was now holding him by the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]